The common cold may have met its match in the form of a nationwide study being conducted at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health, which seeks to create a cure by examining the virus replication process.

The study, which is led by James Gern, professor of pediatrics with the School of Medicine and Public Health, will examine the 50 to 100 newly discovered viruses that cause the common cold.

According to Gern, until recently, only 100 common cold-causing viruses had been identified, which he felt is part of the reason why a cure has not yet been found.

“One of the reasons [past cures] may not have worked very well is because they didn’t know about all the viruses,” Gern said. “This is a big step forward in that direction.”

While the news of multiple cold-causing viruses may come as a shock to some, Gern said these viruses have always existed, but there simply was not a sufficient way to discover them earlier.

The main obstacle arising from the discovery of these new viruses is that many of them do not grow well in tissue cultures such as nasal or other respiratory secretions, which are the primary method for studying viruses in diagnostic laboratories, according to Gern.

“The bottom line is that … you had to be able to grow [viruses] in tissue culture,” Gern said. “Now, methods for detection have really shifted toward looking for the viral genome — so-called molecular techniques — and it just turns out that many of these viruses are difficult to grow in tissue culture.”

With new molecular techniques, Gern said researchers would be able to study how the viruses replicate more effectively.

Gern also said observing and identifying how the virus replicates is the cornerstone to finding a way to slow down and even kill the virus.

“Once you know how [virus replication] works then you can get some ideas on how you can inhibit it and come up with anti-viral medicine,” Gern said.

In contrast to the current H1N1 outbreak, the common cold may seem like a minor illness to study, but Gern said it in fact dramatically affects people with certain respiratory illnesses.

“For healthy adults, in most cases, the common cold is a pretty minor illness but for young children, the elderly and especially people with chronic respiratory disorders like asthma and [chronic obstructive pulmonary disease], the common cold can cause very severe illness,” Gern said.

He added the common cold is responsible for more hospitalizations of young children and the elderly each year than other respiratory viruses.

Another possible benefit of the study is the advancement of research about other viruses besides the ones that cause the common cold, according to Gern.

Tom Friedrich, assistant professor of pathobiological sciences in the School of Veterinary Medicine, felt that research about viruses is positive overall because it could lead to such breakthroughs.

“The more we know about [how viruses work] the better we can understand the principles that connect all viruses,” Friedrich said.